Did you know you could take a magic pill to enhance your cognition? If you’ve heard of nootropics, these supplements are well known to enhance your cognitive performance in attention, motivation, creativity -- and are predicted to be a $4.94 billion industry by 2025. Daniel Freed and Adam Greenfeld saw an opportunity to turn this into a business by creating a personalized nootropics brand, Formula. The duo wanted to introduce nootropics into the market with a focus on personalized formulas catered to unique individual needs.

Adam and Dan both grew up with very different entrepreneurial experiences. Adam sold everything from gum to basketball cards starting at a very young age, while Dan had a very nontraditional experience working in fast food to then being an executive sous chef, and then landing two master’s degrees without ever graduating from high school or college. Now co-founders, Adam and Dan also met in a pretty unusual and unique way in the tech community. There were murmurings about a nootropics founder, and Adam was determined to find out who this was. When Adam did some investigating and found out about Dan and his passion for nootropics, he cold emailed him to express interest in helping him build his vision....and a successful business partnership was born.

“Nootropics had a profound impact on me. It changed the way my brain functioned. I was able to get an MBA and another master’s degree after taking nootropics.” - Daniel Freed

Co-founders, Adam on left and Daniel on the right.

The Aha Moment

Dan always had difficulty in school paying attention, which he attributes to his brain chemistry. Because of this, he failed all of his classes, ultimately leading him to drop out of high school at age 16. Fast forward past his time working in fast food and becoming an international sous chef, Dan felt he needed to do something more with his life, and so he decided to pivot into the startup world. However, without proper education, people didn’t take him seriously so he decided to go back to school for his MBA. Luckily, an international school was interested in him, but this meant he had to prepare for the standardized test. “I couldn’t sit still and finish the practice test. I almost gave up in desperation and I tried anything like different workout routines, fasting, different types of dieting, meditation...and that’s when I decided to try nootropics. When I was working long hours as a chef, there were a lot of biohacking things I tried to do to maximize my energy level, but this was a turning point... when I did a deep dive into nootropics.”

After graduating with masters from both INSEAD and Yale, Dan attributes his success not only to his grit, determination, and experience but also nootropics. While living in New York, Dan jumped right into working for startups but didn’t know he was in the midst of starting a nootropics business. “I loved nootropics and I would give them to people at parties, even though I got mixed reviews. So what I came up with was a variety pack of nootropics. I also set up a mini-trial where people would take nootropics every day and rate how they felt with an app. At the end of the month, I would look at all the data and tell them which ingredients worked for them and what didn’t, and then I would combine the ones that did into a box they could purchase. It was never meant to be a business in the beginning. ”

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The Marketing

“When we first spent time acquiring customers, we had no money. We knew the product really worked and created these experiences and results that were braggable. Our hack through that was to specifically target YouTube influencers. We were hoping these influencers would do what we wanted them to do which was say,“I took the formula for 30 days, and here’s what I’ve learned.” This was a super scrappy approach, and anyone with any type of following who promoted our brand got a box.” From this experience, Adam and Dan learned many insights and found niche audiences that were unexpected and not intuitive to the stereotypical tech male into bio-hacking. “The other thing we really learned from a marketing standpoint -- great marketing is elite customer experience and service. The first team we built out was customer experience, and that will continue to be the center of our company and something we invest in. Of course, supplements feel great, but does someone really want to hang out with us as a brand? We are going through a brand refresh right now and we have 4 years of customer data, and we know enough about what people are confused about, and where people need to feel safe or need an explanation.” Since launching with organic marketing, Formula has more than 15,000 customers to date.

The Customer

Who you thought would be your ideal customer may surprise you. “What we learned was that macho tech guys were not our best or loyal customers, and were the most expensive. By really spreading and going really wide with influencers, we were able to find niche markets like a whole community of millennial females who were looking for alternatives to their Adderall. We also found a community of ex-military outdoor enthusiasts like hunters who were gaining weight from energy drinks when hunting, so they were looking for a new way to stay focused while out in the woods. There was a period of time where we were also doing a bunch of deals with active military YouTubers and so we would send tons of boxes to Afghanistan. What we ended up finding was that people really trust these influencers -- and a bonus was that we were able to acquire media rights to their content and turn those into highly productive Facebook and Instagram ads.”

The Advice

“It is very important that every interaction with your customers is a positive one.”
“If you’re having a really good time and having fun doing a company, it is going to work. For the founders who have been at it --- have fun building it.”
“Don’t spend any money on marketing and PR. Usually, founders think spending money here would be the magic bullet. Once you have a really compelling story that has been validated by other people, it’ll sell.”
“If there is a problem, surround yourselves with people who can help you solve those problems. The number one most important asset in our company is our advisors and mentors, which vastly speeds up the learning curve.”

Interested in bio-hacking your brain? Check out Formula here. Their 4 week supply is priced around $79 when you subscribe or $119 for a one-time purchase. Get started with a personalized quiz and find out your nootropic combo recommendations.

Photo courtesy of Formula.

Written by Christina Chao.